Place #3

3 pm, nearly 40*

Today the snow has such a sheen across it, it's as if it's been shellacked.  And it has.  By rain.  Last week we were gifted nearly three feet of snow.  It stayed cold, one day it was only 12*.  Then, the wind came and swept the hills and fields...the snow filled in all our snowshoe tracks, and some of the driveway I had been plowing.  There are distinctive wave marks across the wide white slopes.   Two nights ago it rained, then cooled enough freeze.  Slick roads.  A bit treacherous, really.  Today the wind is blowing and it is nearly 40*!

The weather.  We watch the weather.  We pay attention to snowfall, water content, powder!  With the road being as glazed as it is, I drive very, very slowly down the driveway, and when I go out walking I use additional traction on my boots.  I even used walking poles yesterday.  No need to fall.

So, today it is warmer than it has been all winter.  And windy! The pines and shrubs that were so laden just a few days ago, are now bare limbed.  Beneath the pines, there is a litter of long, brown needles, and a few small branches that have been shaken loose by the gusts.  There's a magpie in the aspens, just one ,who is making quite a lot of noise.  They can really squawk!  And squabble.  Tikaani has just seen a squirrel who is brave enough to come down from his high home for a nibble of something closer to the ground.

Breaking trail again.  This time, it is heavy work.  Hard!  Tikaani stays behind me as I make our way onto the Game Range.  I pass small mouse tracks in the snow, and often can see the places where they have dived in to the snow, usually near the base of a sagebrush or bitterbrush.  One small circle and some grains of mouse scat, linked to another small circle by tiny footprints...it looks as if they travel by connecting the dots!

Coyotes have been here since the last snow.  There are several trails criss-crossing the field.  I notice that their scat is dense, and blonde now.  It looks quite different from summer/fall scat, which can be full of hair and berries.  Tikaani and I heard coyotes the other afternoon, late in the day.  There is at least one den I know of not far from here.  Lucky for them that there are plenty of field mice and voles beneath the snow.  I know, because Tikaani is always showing me where, with her sharp ears and quick, deft leaps into the snow...then dig, dig, dig.  If she catches something, it's up in the air, neck broken...sometimes she leaves them.  When we check back, they are never there.  Bird or coyote has found an easy meal.

There are icy drips today on the shrubs.  The rosehips look darker, deep scarlet.  The field has a wavy, thick surface, and is so bright in the sun, I'm grateful for my sunglasses...you wouldn't know by looking at it, how many rocks and shrubs and tree stumps lie beneath it.

I've been alone, but for Tikaani,for nearly two weeks.  Today I think of the people who built their small cabins and raised children and dryland farmed on these lands over 100 years ago.  Not much remains of their dreams, but enough for me to wonder what their winters were like so long ago.  No electricity, running water, telephone, etc., etc.   In the spring, when the grasses are just coming up, I like to come here and look around what's left of the small, square stone foundations ...there are pieces of old bottles and jars, rusty wagon parts, farm equipment, shards of pottery, a sagging iron cookstove...

 There is an ancient apple tree up the hill that bears witness to those people's time here.  Every spring, no matter how extreme the winter's cold has been, the tree breaks out in blossoms... It's trunk is scarred from cattle and deer browsing, and it's bark is splitting.  In late summer, there are small apples on its branches.  We leave them for the deer, who will need them in the months ahead. 

I hope to be like that tree; able to stand, even alone, in the winter wind, untended; and to warm enough in the spring to break wide open into blossom.  In spite of it all, I want to survive. To offer the world some simple beauty. To nourish what needs me.